Prestigious photo contest answers ‘what is a photo?’

All photographs entered into the contest must be made with a camera. No synthetic or artificially generated images are allowed, and no use of artificially generative fill is allowed in post-production. Any use of these tools will automatically disqualify the entry from the contest.

Smartphone photographs are permitted only when captured in standard shooting mode; submissions created using HDR, portrait mode, creative lighting effects, or panorama mode are not eligible.

The use of smart tools, or AI-powered enhancement tools is possible within the contest rules, as long as these tools do not lead to significant changes to the image as a whole, introduce new information to the image, nor remove information from the image that was captured by the camera.

Tools that immediately breach the contest rules and are not allowed are all AI powered enlarging tools such as Adobe Super Resolution and Topaz Photo AI. These tools are based on generative AI models that introduce new information to enlarge and sharpen images.